Bourgeois Philanthropists and Revolutionary Social-Democracy

Published:Sotsial-DemokratNo. 41, May 1, 1915.

      Published according to the text inSotsial-Demokrat.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[197[4]],

      Moscow,Volume 21,

      pages192-193.Translated:Transcription\Markup:D. WaltersandR. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      2003

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
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TheEconomist,[1]a journal that speaks for the British
    millionaires, is pursuing a very instructive line in relation to the
    war. Representatives of advanced capital in the oldest and richest
    capitalist country, are shedding tears over the war and incessantly voicing
    a wish for peace. Those Social-Democrats who, together with the opportunists
    and Kautsky, think that a socialist programme consists in the propaganda of
    peace, will find proof of their error if they readThe Economist.Their programme is not socialist, but bourgeois-pacifist. Dreams of peace,
    without propaganda of revolutionary action, express only a horror of war,
    but have nothing in common with socialism.

Moreover,The Economiststands for peace just because it is
    afraid of revolution. For instance, its issue for February 13, 1915,
    contains the following passage:

“Philanthropistsprofess to hope that the peace settlement will
    bring with it a great international reduction of armies .... But those who
    know the forces which really control the diplomacy of Europe see no
    Utopias. The outlook is for bloody revolutions and fierce wars between
    labour and capital, or between the masses and the governing classes of
    Continental Europe ....”

Inthe issue of March 27, 1915, we again find expression of a desire for
    a peace that will guarantee freedom of nationalities, etc., as promised by
    Sir Edward Grey. If this hope is not realised, the paper says, the war
    “will end in revolutionary chaos, beginning no one can say where, and
    ending in no one can say what”.

TheBritish pacifist millionaires have a better understanding of
    present-day politics than the opportunists, thefollowers of Kautsky and
    similar socialist whimperers after peace. The bourgeois know, first, that
    phrases about a democratic peace are an idle and foolish Utopia while the
    old “forces... really control the diplomacy”, i.e., until the
    class of capitalists has been expropriated. Secondly, the bourgeoisie have
    made a sober appraisal of the outlook, foreseeing “bloody
    revolutions” and “revolutionary chaos”. To the bourgeoisie
    a socialist revolution always seems “revolutionary chaos”.

Inthe realistic politics of the capitalist countries, three kinds of
    peace sympathies can be seen:

(1)Themore enlightened millionaires wish an early peace because they
    are afraid of revolutions. They have soberly and correctly described any
    “democratic” peace (without annexations, but with limited
    armaments, etc.) as Utopian under capitalism.

Thisphilistine Utopia is being advocated by the opportunists, the
    adherents of Kautsky, and the like.

(2)Theunenlightened masses of the people (the petty bourgeois,
    semi-proletarians, part of the workers, etc.) whose desire for peace is very
    vague, are thereby expressing a growing protest against the war and a
    growing but as yet vague revolutionary sentiment.

(3)Therevolutionary Social-Democrats, the enlightened advance guard of
    the proletariat, are attentively studying the sentiments of the masses,
    utilising the latter’s growing striving for peace, not in order to
    bolster the vulgar utopias of a “democratic” peace under
    capitalism, not in order to encourage hopes being placed in the
    philanthropists, the authorities, and the bourgeoisie, but to bring clarity
    into vague revolutionary sentiments, to enlighten the masses with a thousand
    facts of pre-war politics; basing that work on the experience of the masses
    and on their sent iments,they are out to prove systematically, steadfastly
    and unswervingly the need for mass revolutionary action against the
    bourgeoisie and the governments of their respective countries as theonlyroad towards democracy and socialism.

[1]TheEconomist—a capitalist weekly published in London since
    1843.